Category Archives: MGM vs. FGM

“There has got to be something very tragic, and very wrong, with a society impaired by its own cultural blinders. It is very disconcerting that while human rights advocates fly half-way around the globe to decry the genital mutilation of girls and women, the very same people display a willful ignorance to the genital mutilation of boys in their own countries. While their cameras faithfully bring back images of girls being restrained as they have part of their genitals forcefully cut off, they somehow fail to capture images of the boys who are enduring the same in the very same countries.

Every so often, we’ll see pictures of the forced genital cutting of boys in the media, however the tone in presentation is different. While the presentation of the images of forced female genital cutting encourage an audience to deplore the actions depicted, the presentation of the images of forced male genital cutting encourage an audience to accept what they see in the scope of "cultural relativism." "Horror and torture" for girls and women, "the preservation of age-old coming-of-age tradition" in boys. Why the sexist double-think?

It is a glaringly obvious inconsistency to defend the forced genital cutting of one sex, but condemn it in the other, yet when advocates of human rights point out this inconsistency, we are often met with hostility. "How dare you compare male and female circumcision," retort some, especially those defending male infant circumcision, "they’re not the same thing!" This is said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if these claims were immediately self-evident.

I must ask, on what are they basing these assertions? Of the people that make these claims, how many of them have actually witnessed a male circumcision, let alone a female one? Can these claims actually be substantiated, or do they expect us to take their word for it at face value? What double-think are they using to condemn the abuse of female children, while defending the abuse of male children?”

"In looking at both Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Male Genital Mutilation (MGM), it appears that there is no equal protection under the law for male infants and boys under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Illegal to perform FGM, fine to perform MGM. Yes, willful destruction of the primary male sex organ is unethical. Or is it much more than unethical?" -Ken Derifield of The Intact Network

“My aim in this article has been to highlight, detail and explain an analytical and normative inconsistency in [the] belief that FGM is intolerable on the grounds that it diminishes capabilities such as bodily integrity through inﬂicting sexual, physiological and psychological harm and is perpetuated by coercive social forces, while regarding MGM as benign. By examining the history of MGM and drawing on empirical studies of its eﬀects on sexual, physiological and psychological functioning, I have sought to show that there is good reason to recognize qualitative, though in the majority of cases not quantitative, similarities between MGM and FGM.”

“In the wake of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) short-lived call to amend the national ban on female genital cutting, Intact America – the largest organization championing all children’s human right to an intact body – published an open letter to an AAP Task Force on Circumcision calling on the medical organization to extend its protection to all children, including baby boys.”

The following video was posted by the YouTube member freedom0f5peech, who has an excellent assortment of informational videos about the subject of genital mutilation. This particular video was a response to another YouTube member who, like many people, is clearly not aware of the similarities between and misconceptions about female genital mutilation (FGM) and male genital mutilation (MGM). Due to a politically correct mindset in various countries, some people express massive anger about cutting females but blatantly refuse to accept that what is routinely done to baby boys is just as wrong as what happens to baby girls in some countries.

*Warning – the video contains various profanities as well as some images of human genitalia.

“The universal declaration of human rights state that every man, woman and child should have equal rights without discrimination (United Nations, 1948). These rights should have meaning within our everyday lives and aim to protect all people from injustice.”